5 Lessons for Becoming a Marketing Master

Marketing:  the activity, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. (American Marketing Association)

• Understand your Person -
• Create a Mission to give them value, and solve their problem.
• Understand the important assignment that you have for creating value & solving problems - Your "Why" for your customers. When your marketing message is a mission you inspire your prospects & customers to take action.
• Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why says, "There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it." Isn't "manipulation" what we're all trying to avoid. Leveling up to "inspiration" marketing happens when you narrow your focus and understand the person whose problem you're solving and creating value for. Your understanding of your person is what creates the trust needed for your person to take action because they know you "get them." 
• The Entrepreneurial Model does not start with a picture of the business to be created but of the customer for whom the business is to be created. Or as Seth Godin says, "Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.”

• Develop "Business Leadership" skills beyond "Business Technician" skills
• As a Business Leader, my job is to prepare myself and my business for growth. (Michael Gerber)
• Technician stays involved with the tasks of "doing" the business. The Business Leaders keeps his or her focus on the customer and how the value is delivered with growth in mind.
• Challenge you to see your role as a business owner as a leader in value delivery for your person - committed to the mission of inspiring customers to take action with your business.

• Discipline and Training
• Learning how to use digital marketing tools & strategies takes training. Develop understanding to manage the talent & experience of others. What are the available tools and how do I reach my person? How can I best communicate the value I provide with as many people who fit the description of "my person"
• Be committed to trial & error - embrace challenges, obstacles, and "failure"
• Be committed to exercising the discipline to show up consistently - Be willing to take imperfect action long enough to develop perfected results.

• Be the Purple Cow in your industry - Great Marketing doesn't blend in
• "The key to success is to find a way to stand out - to be the purple cow in a field of monochrome Holsteins." Seth Godin
• The only way to be indispensable is to be different."
• As you develop your understanding of your ideal person and study the problem that you're creating solutions for you'll develop the expertise to not only meet expectations but also reinvent the expectations.
• Raising people’s expectations, engaging in their hopes and dreams, helping them see further—that’s the difficult work we signed up for."
• Beware - you will also open yourself up to criticism - And you will feel like an imposter. You will need to be willing to get it wrong until you get it right but when you do your results will be your calling card and your ideal prospect will come looking for you.
• https://www.thegrowthfaculty.com/blog/sethgodininspirationalquotes

• Push Past the Brain Chatter
• Stephen Pressfield - scriptwriter for The Legend of Bagger Vance - Start the work before you are ready.
• Your biggest enemy is "Resistance" - that voice in your head that says, "I can't. I don't know